


The Worst Kind of Time

by GrimMoire



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Be prepared for your heart to break, Slight mention of Sans/Toriel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 08:22:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5156810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrimMoire/pseuds/GrimMoire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Doc, are you sure this is a good idea? I don't know much about machinery, but the Core overheating doesn't sound good."</p>
<p>"I-I'm sure of this. I m-made sure everything was sh-shut off in the Core a-and the worst that happens is it m-melts. I-I'm one hundred percent certain that it's safe!"</p>
<p>But what if one hundred percent sure isn't enough?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Worst Kind of Time

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so... Yeah. This is a thing.
> 
> First things first, expect to cry. This is not a happy fic.
> 
> Threw it together from this prompt: After the monsters leave, the core is never cooled, and there are negative results.
> 
> Prompt comes from: http://undertalepromptfeast.tumblr.com/

It had been about a year and a month since the barrier fell, and six months since all the monsters had left the underground. Alphys and Ice Wolf were the last two to leave.

"Doc, are you sure this is a good idea? I don't know much about machinery, but the Core overheating doesn't sound good."

"I-I'm sure of this. I m-made sure everything was sh-shut off in the Core a-and the worst that happens is it m-melts. I-I'm one hundred percent certain that it's safe!" She wrung her hands nervously, beads of sweat slowly rolling down the side of her face. "Just to be sure, I... I did set up a launching system, for... for the ice. It should keep traveling to Hotland uninterrupted."

"Okay, Doc. If you're sure, then I can rest easy. Now, about my pay..."

\-----

Deep, deep in the earth. Far below the easily reachable parts of the Core lay the Depths. Dark, oppressively so, there rested a great machine. One of Dr. W.D. Gaster's forgotten experiments. There were wires, tubes, tanks... everything about it was massive.

And dangerous.

If any human scientists were to gaze upon it, a select few would recognize key components of it and shudder in fear.

Gaster was a brilliant man. So smart was he that anyone who knew what they were looking at would be awed and terrified.

He'd made a magical version of a nuclear reactor. It lay dormant, inactive.

But it was still dangerous. Solidified magic, condensed to the point where any further pressure would cause an explosion of incalculable magnitude, lay in bars within the reactor. Untouched, uncontained, and unused, it leaked magical energy into the area around it.

The walls of the Core began to warp from the heat and the ambient magic.

\-----

Alphys stood on the balcony in her home, gazing at Mt. Ebott. It seemed so much smaller since they were on the outside. Something was bothering her, though. She couldn't quite place her claw on what it was.

Thanks to Frisk, she'd been accepted amongst the human scientific community. Major advances had been made in science and the manipulation of magic. In her spare time, she'd been researching the most dangerous weapons humanity had made.

The nuclear bomb. It terrified her, knowing that at any point a human could have sent one to the underground, primed and ready to detonate, and not a single one of them would have known just how dangerous it really was.

She gripped the wooden railing, lost in her thoughts. She didn't feel it cracking in her hand.

Her own curiosity had almost cost her her life. She'd managed to gain access to the blueprints that detailed how a nuclear bomb was made, and how a nuclear reactor worked. She studied them carefully, too engrossed in her work to notice that military police were surrounding her house.

She'd been brought before the UN. All the leaders of the world were ready to have her executed, for fear of her causing an international incident.

In her fear, she made a deal. She said she could figure out how to contain the fallout from a nuclear reaction, regardless of if it were a bomb or a reactor malfunction. She said she could do a lot of things concerning nuclear radiation; the cleanup, the setup, everything.

In exchange, her silence was all that was needed. Not a word to anyone, or anything. She could tell no one what she was working on.

She said it was worth it, even through the long hours and harsh words.

But she was still uneasy. A vague memory at the back of her mind, of having seen the reactor blueprints before, taunted her.

She went inside, not noticing that she'd taken a small portion of the wooden railing until she went to refill her cup of cocoa.

\-----

The Depths glowed with a dull red light. Gaster's reactor stood, giant and immovable, awash with color.

It was beginning to melt. The solidified magic rods within were becoming unstable.

The glass around them shattered from the heat, and the lava inched towards the rods...

\-----

Sans shot up in his sleep, his eye flashing blue and yellow. Something had woken him.

Everyone was about to have a bad time.

He shot from the bed, not hearing Toriel groggily call him. It was only a matter of moments before a terrible rumbling shook the house, tossing him to the floor. He stood as best he could and threw open the door to Frisk's room.

"Frisk! Wake up! You need to re... set..."

Frisk's room looked upon Mt. Ebott. Or rather, what remained of it.

The entire top half of Mt. Ebott had disintegrated and was replaced with a sickly purple mushroom cloud. A geyser of lava lit the cloud from within, tossing shadows everywhere upon itself.

Just before the shockwave hit, Sans could have sworn he saw Gaster's face in the dust racing towards him.

\-----

"Devastation and chaos reign supreme today, following the aftermath of the eruption of Mt. Ebott. Officials say it is far to dangerous to go near the remains of the mountain, but we have managed to get some footage from a distance. We now go to Tom, who's out at the site. Tom, how does it look there?"

A thin man came on the air, microphone in hand. Behind him, far in the distance, lay the smoking ruin of Mt. Ebott.

"Thank you, Casey. It looks bad, to tell you the truth. Eyewitnesses say that the eruption looked like a nuclear bomb going off within the mountain, and that the smoke was, believe it or not, colored purple. Regardless of the initial cause, no one can doubt the results. If you'll look behind me, you'll see only the barest hints of the town that used to be here at the base of Mt. Ebott. It is not known if there are any survivors, and so far it seems like rescue operations will take a bit to begin." A commotion is heard as a shrill female voice grows nearer. The camera pans to the right and a female lizard monster is seen rushing forwards, heedless of those in her way. Two cops came forward and held her back, trying to haul her away as she kicked and screamed.

"Let me go, I need to get in there! My wife is in there! Let me go! I need to know that she's okay! _LET ME GO! **UNDYNE! UNDYNE, PLEASE BE ALIVE!**_ "

_But no one answered._


End file.
